Already the victim of cutbacks in recent years, Dow Jones' Asian operations, including The Wall Street Journal Asia, face an uncertain future with Rupert Murdoch's US$5.6 billion takeover of the US media company.
Launched in 1976, the Asia edition of the Journal has struggled since the dotcom crash of 2000. After five years of losses, executives say the paper returned to profitability last year following the move from a broadsheet to a tabloid format. But the return to the black doesn't guarantee a secure future under Mr Murdoch.
Veteran Hong Kong-based columnist and businessman Stephen Vines said he suspected Mr Murdoch might take a tough line with the international editions of the journal. 'I think the first thing that you'd have to say is that these publications [the Asian and European Wall Street Journals] must be vulnerable in the sense that they're not profit-making,' he said.
The Wall Street Journal Asia employs more than 70 news staff in 14 bureaus across the region, uses printing plants in nine cities and has a circulation of 80,000 copies. The big shift to a compact format appears to have helped turn around the losses of previous years. Revenues rose more than 20 per cent last year and are up 35 per cent in the year to date, according to Christine Brendle, Dow Jones' managing director of consumer media in Asia.
'It's a tough one, what to do with the Asian Journal,' said Vivek Couto, executive director of the independent research firm Media Partners Asia. 'The pan-regional advertising market isn't as high-growth as it was 10 years ago, and its prospects are fairly limited.'
This year is turning into a watershed year for mergers and acquisitions in the media industry, and Mr Murdoch's purchase of Dow Jones is the biggest story of them all.
